Breading machines used to coat food products that vary widely in size, shape and consistency are in widespread use. A typical application is in restaurants where successions of different food products--fish filets, chicken legs and breasts, thin strips of boneless chicken flesh, onion rings, etc.--are breaded in response to orders. These machines have included a breading reservoir, a breading conveyor for moving breading material and food products through a breading application station, and a device for mounding breading material at the application station. Food items were often introduced into the breading machine by a delivery conveyor that deposited batter coated food products on the breading conveyor.
Assuring the uniform application of breading has been problematic because of the structural differences between the diverse food products. For instance, when a succession of chicken breasts, legs and other relatively large, dimensionally stable items passed through a prior art breading machine, the supply of breading material available to coat the items at the breading application station was both depleted and dampened from batter as successive items passed through the station. This resulted in items being incompletely breaded. When chicken meat strips--or other elongated, essentially flaccid items--were breaded, they were sometimes deposited in a heap on the breading conveyor. When heaped, these items passed through the breading station without being completely coated by the breading material.
The present invention provides new and improved food product breading machinery that is so constructed and arranged that breading material is accumulated and retained at a breading application station to assure that relatively large dimensionally stable food items are completely and reliably coated. The present invention also provides a new and improved food product breading machine that is so constructed and arranged that elongated, flaccid food items are delivered to the breading application station in an extended condition, and are not heaped when they pass through the breading application station.